October 22, 2008 Walking and more grown up things for Emily

We awoke on Sunday morning to a beautiful cool fall day. We had breakfast and since nobody had to be anywhere until 2:30 I asked Mike and the kids to join me on a walk. They all agreed and we decided we'd check out the trail of tears off of Rt 149 in Barnstable, a 10 minute drive from our house. It was a nice path through the woods, Dan placed his arrows when we came to a new path. Marley found a ball and had Emily throw it for the duration of the walk. We were in the woods for nearly an hour before making our way back to the van. The ride home was filled with the sounds of "I found another tick" and we promptly frontlined Sampson who made it through the entire summer without needing it. In all we removed over 50 ticks between the 4 of us! Dan and I worked on wrapping his friend Justin's birthday present and making him a card for his 2:30 party, at which Dan had a great time. I went to work and enjoyed the quiet but efficient company of my Assistant Manager, as predicted we were done with hours to spare.
Monday morning we took Emily to work, then did some grocery shopping for the week, and came home and did laundry. It was a perfect fall day, with a brisk north wind. I dried our sheets on the line in 30 minutes and happily dried 4 loads in one day. I think that's a record! Dan, Marley and i took a walk down Cove Rd, to Shore Drive then through the woods home. It's a 40 minute walk and Dan really enjoys it. Monday night I worked as well, and again were done with only minor things left to do at 7:30. My Assitant Manager and I are now fighting for customers just to keep busy! My how the pendulum has swung!
Tuesday Dan and I took Em to work again and since it was another nice day and all the laundry was done we decided we'd spend some time at the playground. We pulled in and found the Harmon's there. Buzz and I had a chance to catch up while the kids played. We had lunch at the playground then since Dan's been nagging me to go we went over to the Cape Cod Children's museum http://www.capecodchildrensmuseum.org/to play for a little while before having to pick Emmy up at work at 2pm. I spoke to James at Citizen's bank when I was there on Monday about opening a checking account for Emily so she'll have a debit card. I've gone back and forth about whether I wanted her to have one and ultimately decided I'd rather help her navigate money management and banking under my supervision before she's old enough to do it on her own. So after work we went down to talk to James who set Emily up with her own Checking account under our account. The stipulations are that she will have $50 direct deposited into her checking account every week and all the rest will be direct deposited into her savings account. As it stands Mike and I are the only ones with access to online banking on all the accounts so I'm pretty confident it's a good way to start. She excitedly ordered In the Wild checks until she saw the price. Hey kid....this is real life now!
Wednesday was another busy day, Dan, Em and I all went to the Sandwich Library for Mr. Parson's storytime, then headed to Wareham to follow up with a recommendation from one of the Saturn dealership salesmen about Spirit Auto in Buzzards Bay. We pulled into the parking lot. The man Russ, who we were told to speak with, promptly met us in the parking lot. We told him what we were looking for and he directed us to a 1998 Ford Contour 84K miles, $2900. And somehow it felt right.....He said he hadn't looked at it yet, but was due to go in tomorrow and would give us a call. Em's calling it hers, hopefully we'll all go check it out Friday afternoon after she gets off work. On the way home, we decided we'd go take a ride to 4C's. I had to schedule another math assessment test to try and bring up my grade by 12 points to avoid a remedial math course, and since we were there I thought we'd check with the GED office about scheduling Emily's test. Everybody was very nice, and it was amazing how anti public, pro home school everybody was. Em will take the GED test next month and if she passes it could start college as early as this coming spring. I'm so excited for her, and wished that college had been an option for me at her age. I think I could have done well in the community college live at home setting.
I'm excited to report that I'm confident that I aced my Sociology test tonight. I was confident about the first test too, but completely studied the wrong information and came away with only a C+ (I cried) this time I'm confident I gave him what he was looking for....I'll find out in a week.